Karen Gearon - The Dunnes Store Strikers

 

Okay. I'm 20 years of age. I'm the shop steward in Dunnes Stores, Henry Street in Dublin. And I receive an instruction from our union, called mandate, that we're no longer to handle South African produce because of apartheid. We knew very little about South Africa. We didn't know how to pronounce or spell apartheid. But we followed the union instruction. 

 

We went around the store to find out what was South African. It was mainly outspan oranges and grapefruit, and informed management that we were going to follow this instruction. We were immediately put on cash registers. I remember sitting there myself, Mary Manning, and Liz Deasy and this woman coming up with two outspan grapefruit in her basket. We looked at each other and we prayed that she wasn't going to come to one of us. [audience chuckles] But she did. She came to Mary Manning. And Mary Manning refused to handle South African produce and was suspended. We came out on strike, and that was the first day, the 19th of July, 1984, at a quarter past 12:00 on a Thursday. And I remember it well that the Dunnes Stores antiapartheid strike started. 

 

As I said, we knew very little about South Africa, we knew there was discrimination, but we didn't know what discrimination it was about. We were a few days on the picket line, and a man called Nimrod Sejaka came onto the picket line, and he started telling us about what was South African and what was apartheid all about. He was an exile from South Africa, and he'd been living in Ireland for about 15 years. He told us what it was like to be a black person living in South Africa. 

 

“You couldn't sit on the same seat as a white person. You couldn't use the same toilet. You had to be out of the cities and the towns that white people lived in by a certain time. And you had to have a passbook to leave your township.” He described what apartheid was like in one of the best ways that I can describe it. It was like a pint of Guinness. The majority of the people living in South Africa were black, and the minority were white. And like a pint of Guinness, the white sat on top of the black. And because of Nimrod and what he was telling us about South Africa, that changed for us personally. It no longer became a union instruction. We were never, ever going to handle South African goods until apartheid had gone, and freedom for everybody in South Africa had been achieved. 

 

The strike went on. Our union official told us, “May take a couple of weeks.” We were six months on strike when we got an invitation to meet Bishop Desmond Tutu. He was coming from America, going over to Oslo to pick up a Nobel Peace Prize, and he said, “I'd like to meet the Dunnes Stores strikers in London.” So, as we did being shop workers, we got in a car and we drove and took the ferry over to London to meet Bishop Desmond Tutu, who was about to collect a Nobel Peace Prize. [audience laughter] 

 

I remember being there, and it was the first time that we really had any media interest. The cameras are there, and this small little man comes into the room. People that know me know I'm not a very huggy person. So, the first thing he does is come and hugs us, and I'm like, “Oh God.” [audience chuckles] And then, he told us and the media how proud he was of us and how brave we were. And for somebody like that to say that, it just brought more passion to us than we ever had before. And he told us that he would go back to South Africa and he would tell the ordinary workers, the ordinary black workers in South Africa, that they weren't on their own, that there was people from other countries that cared enough to do something about apartheid. 

 

That was in December of 1984. We were six months on strike. We went through a long winter. And then, as the first anniversary of the strike happened, and we were getting very little support from the government, from a lot of Irish people and from the trade union movement, but we stuck to our guns. Bishop Desmond Tutu asked us to come to South Africa to see for ourselves what apartheid was all about. We had no money to go, because we had earned-- When we were working about £85 a week, we were now on £21 a week. The union would only give us £1,000, and the trip was going to cost about £8,000. 

 

So, one night in Dublin City, we got as many supporters as we could together, and we went around every pub in Dublin City raising funds for that trip. And we raised £7,000 in 1985 to go on that trip to South Africa. That was the support we got from ordinary working-class people in Dublin. The trip was organized, and we headed over to Heathrow and was about to board the plane, Bush Airways plane to Heathrow or in Heathrow to go to South Africa. We were stopped and held for a number of hours there. They wouldn't let us on the plane, because the South African wouldn't allow the plane to land. 

 

Eventually, through negotiations, we boarded the plane to be told afterwards that the captain had told all the passengers that we were the reason the plane had been delayed for so long. We were all separated, we weren't allowed to sit together. So, you can imagine the atmosphere. We were quite terrified. And remember, we're only 20. The youngest of us was 17, the oldest was 24, the rest of us were all 20. We arrived in Jan Smuts Airport, which is now by the way, called Oliver Tambo Airport. When we arrived on each side of the tarmac, there were soldiers. We thought this was the norm. 

 

We arrived in to get our passports checked and soldiers came and asked us were we the group from Ireland. We said, “We were.” Immediately, there was about 40 armed soldiers around us with machine guns. We were escorted upstairs. We were held under armed guard for eight hours. We did not know what was going to happen to us, because we had heard stories of people disappearing once they got to South Africa, and black South Africans themselves disappearing. 

 

Eventually, we were informed that we were going to be sent back on the same plane. But while we were there for eight hours, we couldn't even go to the bathroom where two women soldiers would come in with us and the door would have to stay open. When we got eventually back on the plane, we were disappointed that we were leaving, but one sense we were relieved that were safe. And going up the steps of the plane, I never forget when I got to the top of the stairs, I turned around and I put my fist up and I said, “We will be back when South Africa is free.” And Sandra, one of the strikers, pushed me in and said, “Get that [audio cut] into the plane.” [audience laughter] 

 

When we arrived back in Heathrow-- Now, we left on a Monday at 12:00 noon and this was now a Wednesday at 07:00 AM in the morning. None of our families knew where we were at all. So, you can imagine the worry. When we arrived in Heathrow, we were told by the captain that all passengers must remain seated, that the police were boarding the plane. We looked at each other and said, “Oh God, here we go again. We're going to be thrown out of Britain, as well as everything else.” But weren't. We were escorted into a press conference. 

 

11 workers, 10 young women and 1 young man. We're in a press conference with all of the media from the UK, the Irish media, the press media asking us what happened, what was going on. There was a headline saying, “The most dangerous people in the world. And that was the Dunnes Stores strikers.” [audience laughter]

 

When we got back from South Africa and London, a mass picket was organized. Now, up to that moment, there was very little support for the strike. There was a lot of lip service paid, but not real support. On that day, the Saturday, there was nearly 7,000 people on that picket line. You couldn't walk up or down Henry Street for the amount of people that were out there supporting us. So, thank you to the South African apartheid government for kicking us out. [audience chuckles] 

 

As I said, the strike continued. And then, in October of 1985, the most amazing thing happened as well. We were invited over to address the United Nations in New York. Can you imagine, shop workers picketing outside Dunnes Stores day in, day out and the UN wants us to talk to them? So, I go over and a colleague, Michelle Gavin, comes over with me. When I got to do my speech, I was terrified in South Africa, but I think I was nearly more terrified in this, because there were all people in suits and what I would say, posh people, rich people, people that were really important, not just Dunnes little workers from Dublin and Ireland. 

 

When we got to do our speech, and I did it, the first time ever recorded in the UN that there was actually standing applause, because we were just ordinary, everyday people standing up for what was right. And that made a difference to everybody that was sitting around that room that day. Eventually, the government started to take some notice of us and they brought in a boycott of South African goods. When we started the strike, there were two antiapartheid movements, one in Cork and one in Dublin. By the time the strike ended, which lasted two years and nine months, there was more than 36 anti-apartheid groups. And they were done stores support groups that formed antiapartheid groups after that. So, the momentum was really good. 

 

The government introduced the boycott on the 1st of January 1987. Ireland is the first Western country to actually put a boycott of South African produce in place. And that was a direct result of the work of us, the Dunnes Store strikers, moving that in such a way. Then, we all drifted apart and tried to get work and tried to go back to some normal life. And then, all of a sudden, we couldn't believe that Nelson Mandela is released from prison. We're watching individually by ourselves, this man is free. Can you believe it? Did we ever think we'd see the day? And then, we find out he's coming to Ireland, and he wants to meet the Dunne Stores Strikers. [audience chuckles] 

 

Our idol, the person that we had idolized for so many years-- We lost so much and we gained so much, because we had so much passion about what he represented. I looked up to him and he's a very tall man, I thought, oh my God, you are the person I have always wanted to meet. And now, I'm standing here and it was totally surreal. He shook hands with us and he said, “You are so brave.” He gave us his medal of bravery. Nelson Mandela, us. I just couldn't believe it. When he said we were so brave, all of the bad feeling, all of the hurt that we went through on those bad winters and dawns just totally fell away, because he acknowledged what we did. We didn't care about anybody else. He did. 

 

I wasn't at home the night Nelson Mandela died. I was actually in the pub. [chuckles] When I came home, my mom had actually rang me, and she's here in the audience to tell me he died. I thought, oh, God, it was heartbreaking. The following morning, we got a call to go up to Dublin to the Mansion House next door to sign the book of condolences. I'm living in Kerry and have been for the last 26 years. When I got in my car, I was just going down the drive and I got a phone call, bring the passport, just in case. I thought, yeah, right, that's ever going to happen. 

 

 When we got up to the Mansion House, we signed the book of condolences. And next of all, within an hour, we're told we're going to the funeral of Nelson Mandela in South Africa. All of us. When we went into Jan Smuts airport, we were scared. We were so nervous. Everything went well, and we're going through arrivals, and it's the Irish Embassy in Johannesburg, in Victoria, coming to collect us the Dunnes Stores strikers. And to bring us to our hotel, and then the rest of the strikers come and join us the day later, and we're all there, and we're back in South Africa, and South Africa is free.